


A Home Beyond Our Wildest Dreams

by Merixcil



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Prison, Redemption is a long and tricky process
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-18 01:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13671177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: Ben accepts his fate and Rey accepts her destiny. What they build from that is up to them.





	A Home Beyond Our Wildest Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vivien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vivien/gifts).



> I went for the happy ending prompt - I hope this lives up to your expectations!
> 
> For a variety of reasons I'm kinda adamant that Ben's last name should be Organa so that's what it is in this fic. 
> 
> I didn't have time to finish editing this as thoroughly as I would have liked before the posting date so the last 4k words will likely be rewritten sometime over the next week to remedy that. 
> 
> I'm not super familiar with expanded universe canon so if I've said something here that contradicts established facts I apologise - please know it's not intentional

Rey dreams of twin suns hounding each other for a place in the cosmos, of the clouds on Ahch-To parting to reveal that glorious light once the rains had passed. Every morning she wakes and reaches for her lightsabre, resting next to her pillow and feels the familiar hard lines of the handle pushing hard against her palm. In the dark, everywhere looks like Jakku.

She sits up and feels the burn of broken ribs digging into her organs at uncomfortable angles. She can’t remember how that happened save that it was a stupid reason to break bones. The swirling lights of battle suggest themselves to her in place of a real memory but she knows there must me more hiding behind the curtain. They won. The Resistance won. Something bigger than herself.

Rey’s head aches, the muscles across her back are wound tight with residual stress. She tries to remember where she is but can’t remember much more than the dark night sky overhead as they were leaving Cathridge. It’s hard to tell how long she’s been asleep since then, she feels exhausted but that’s to be expected in the wake of battle. The slim line bunk she’s camped out on, however, can only be on the _Falcon_ , so that’s something.

It takes her a few tries to get to her feet, stumbling into the corridor and blinking against the low lighting flanking the path through to the main hold. Rey follows, gripping tight to the wall and missing the ends of frayed wiring peeking out from behind displaced panels on instinct.

Chewbacca is spread eagled on the floor, asleep. Rey leans hard on the doorway and breathes deep despite the wailing of her lungs as she tries to parse what this means. The ships engine ticks over, electronics straining to maintain gravity and oxygen as they have done for so many years. Someone has to be piloting this thing.

Tentatively, Rey pushes out with the Force to hunt for other life forms on board. Small rodents and strange parasitic insects are hiding in the walls, but she’s familiar enough with them. She stretches on, through the cargo bay and round to the front of the _Falcon_ where a lone figure is working the controls that keep this thing in the sky.

Kylo Ren.

Ben Organa?

Rey isn’t sure which name she’s supposed to use. She’s spent the past few years watching him fall apart at a distance and praying that when he put himself back together it would be in the shape of something better than the boy who had fallen. Someone who might help the Resistance, something useful.

He’s spent all his life as someone else’s tool. Rey wasn’t being particularly helpful or kind, but the Resistance didn’t need a friend, they needed a weapon.

She brushes against his mind with the lightest touch only to find that he’s been tucked alongside her consciousness since she fell asleep. The regular expansion and contraction of his ribcage as he breathes steadies her heart; he feels solid, the hard outlines of his figure hovering over her. Wanting to ask if she’s ok but not sure if he has the right.

There had been a spectre, a ghoul that used to trail her through the graveyards of the empire on Jakku. It had been angry and desperate and frightened. When Rey dreams of her childhood, it’s usually with her. She'’ never recognised it before.

Foolish. Stupid. Obvious. _It was you._

Kylo Ren. Ben Organa? Considers this and when he replies his feelings are stilted. _Some of it._

_I see._

Rey creeps through to the cockpit, winding when her feet land too hard on the metal flooring and disrupt her breathing.

He’s so much bigger than either of his parents, occupying more space than anyone planned on setting aside for him since the day he was born. Rey stands back, watching as he flicks through engine sequences, disengaging and calibrating without hesitation. He’s good. Instinctive, even, like he grew up doing this.

“Ha.” Kylo. Ben? Laughs without humour.

Rey collapses into the co-pilot chair and pushes her hair, freed from its ties, out of her face. Her biceps protest and it feels like she might have pulled a muscle in each arm.

Across the cockpit, Kylo Ren. Ben Organa? Flinches in sympathy. “Do you remember what happened?”

“You killed Hux. I disrupted the communications hub on the _Finaliser_ and the First Order fleet was left reeling. No idea what to do without orders to follow. After that it was easy.”

“And then TIE fighter fell on you as we were leaving.”

Rey blinks at him. “What?”

“Here.” Kylo Ren. Ben Organa? Sends her a memory of a falling from _The_ _Finaliser_ docking station and glancing off a small figure that she can only assume is herself.

The main thing Rey takes away from the memory is that the world looks very different when you’re as tall as Kylo Ren. Ben Organa? In his eyes, she is minuscule.

His brow starts to knit into a scowl. “It’s not-“

“It’s fine.”

They sit in silence as Kylo. Ben? Steers them neatly between the planets of a small system that the navcom informs Rey is just outside the Morna quadrant, not all that far from Cathridge. He’s plotted a course for Dantooine where the Resistance will be celebrating victory but he hasn’t engaged the hyper drive. Rey supposes that were she in his position, she’d be in no hurry either.

He shrinks into himself when she tries to approach him through the Force. They’ve tried so hard to keep their minds separate from one another, he’s not used to this.

What little intimacy exists between the two of them is born of necessity, and the freak moments the Force has thrown them at one another. They’ve spent so little time in the same room. _The Finaliser_ , a brief blip on one of the outer planets in the Hoth system, Snoke’s throne room, the Forrest, that time he tried to interrogate her.

As if there was ever anything in either of their heads that the other didn’t know. Kylo Ren. Ben Organa? Told her once that he remembered the day she was born, how his heart had felt light for a week and Snoke had taken great pains to kill the speck of hope blooming in his ten year old chest. Then he had closed himself off from her for months and what little Rey could make out of his emotional landscape was angry and confused.

Snoke is old news. Systems, as it transpires, are far more threatening than individuals. Hux was nothing, just a figurehead, and once the First Order’s communications were scrambled the pieces of the whole fell apart of their own accord. It doesn’t matter if anyone steps in to try to manipulate the balance of power, they will already have lost.

Maybe you’ll kill the next one. Kylo Ren. Ben Organa? Suggests. There’s a faint bite of humour to his thoughts,

Rey doesn’t have it in her to carry the Joker. “I’d rather not.”

They continue through the deep dark emptiness that spreads out before them once they’ve left the planet behind, both aware that Rey is thinking about the hyper drive but neither of them moving to initialise it. Kylo. Ben? Is worried. of that much Rey is sure. She doesn’t have to wonder why.

He did terrible things. But…

Every end to that thought feels unfair and unbalanced. Even if his blip as Supreme Leader was almost non-existent, it still took Kylo Ren. Ben Organa? Fifteen years to lift a finger to bring them to an end. He killed Han, he tried to kill Finn. He has murdered so many people whose names Rey will never know and he has stood aside and done nothing while yet more were mown down by his compatriots. His sudden change of heart might stick, but there’s no way the Resistance courts are going to take that chance.

But Rey knows him, she has known him all her life. He feels changed, not completely but in a way that feels real and fundamental. There’s no telling what he might become if he were allowed to explore his destiny from here on out. He might even turn into someone with the courage to look his mother in the eye.

Closing her eyes, Rey breathes deep and hopes that her compatriots on Dantooine will forgive her. “You don’t have to go back.”

“I have to present myself to the Resistance.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.”

She watches his hands tighten over the controls. His gloves have been shed, exposing nails bitten to the quick and fingers bent at odd angles where they’ve healed badly. Mementos from Snoke.

Rey is so tired, she could sleep for a week. “If you go back, they’ll put you on trial and lock you up for as long as their laws will justify. They might even kill you outright.”

“They might.” Kylo Ren. Ben Organa? Agrees.

“That doesn’t worry you?”

“Of course it does. But what kind of coward turns traitor onto to run from the people they have purported to help? If I’m going to risk my neck for your world, Rey, the least I can do is try living in it.”

Why should she care? He’s just a monster that she managed to persuade to join her cause. She didn’t do it for herself, she did it for the Resistance. It just seems so strange, so callous, that after all this time he should get little more than a moment of triumph before being judged on everything he was before.

It’s entirely fair. Kylo Ren. Ben Organa? Assures her. And a lot kinder than leaving me to the mercy of the First Order.

Rey makes a vague noise of agreement then does her best to stop thinking about it. She curls her legs up into the copilot’s chair and looks out of the bridge at the unchanging horizon of stars opened up before them. At the pace their going, at least it will take them time to get back to Dantooine.

 

 

 ----------

 

 

Rey dreams of the days she spent without food or water, when she would suck on a handful of sand to ease the rawness of her throat and swallow it when she was done to fiill her belly She dreams of the bland smoked fish Luke fed her on Ahch-To, more nourishing than the portions Unkar PLutt handed out but tacky and hard to swallow. She dreams of the night she had spent in Snoke’s thrown room, the first and only time she ever killed. Like always, she wakes and reaches for her lightdabre, tucked into the soft sheets in Rose’s spare bedroom.

The smell of caf wafting through from the kitchen lets her know that she hasn’t slept in too late, always a risk when you first make planetfall. She sits up and finds her hair converging in a matted mass over her face that takes a while to settle back, swishing around her hips. She should get it cut before Leia starts using her as a dress up doll to rehash half remembered Alderaanian styles on.

“Morning!” Rose beams when Rey comes through to the kitchen. She’s already dressed for the day, loose fitting summer overalls with the zip dropped low enough to see the bright pink shirt underneath.

“Morning.” Rey replies and gratefully receives the offered cup of caf.

Rose steers the both towards the table in the middle of the room, cut haphazard from local wood and at odds with the clinical white of the new settlement interiors. They work their way through the astonishingly large pile of breakfast patties that Rose had prepared the night before, claiming that they taste best when left to cool so they can be smothered with hot syrup.

“Wasn’t expecting to see you back here so soon.” Rose grins. It’s an empty, honest statement. Rey likes that about Rose. She doesn’t beat around the bush and she rarely asks for explanations.

So Rey doesn’t give her one, just nods and takes another bite of her breakfast. The patties are sweet and rich without weighing heavy on her stomach. Rose is a very good cook.

After breakfast Rose grabs her tool bag and heads off to the space port, leaving Rey a key. She promises to pick up an application form for a temporary work permit while she’s out. Rey has no idea how long she’s going to be on Dantooine and she could use the money either way.

Without a job to go to, there’s very little to fill Rey’s day. Poe is currently based on Takodonna and that means that Finn is also based on Takodonna. Leia will definitely want to see her but the former General is usually rushed off her feet trying to bring new systems into Neo Publica.

She’s here to check in with the new government, keep them updated of the Force sensitives that she’s encountered and possibly search for a few more while she’s here. Rey should really make an appointment to speak to whoever’s running the Atypical Educational Expansion committee but she’d like a day or so to breathe before she gets on with that.

With a faint promise that it doesn’t mean anything, that she’s just checking to be sure, Rey reaches for Rose’s datapad and heads to the holonet page for Dantooine Central Detention Facility. A familiar reticence floods down her spine as she clicks on the page showing regular visiting hours. For lack of anything better to do with her time, she could certainly stop by to see how he’s getting on.

 

 

 

The prison is cold, uninviting and poorly named. It’s miles from the Malar, which in turn is two hours from Dantooine Central. Rey tries to enjoy the rush of countryside and new growth housing that lined the speedbus route, the growing patchworks of farms spilling out south of Malar.

The transport up to the prison gates has bars on the windows and hooks at the front of each seat to attach handcuffs to. Something scrabbles at the corner of her mind, begging to see what she sees. But Rey has done her best to ignore her other half in the years since the war ended and she has no frame of reference for what’s normal for him. She’s not sure it would be wise, legal or fair to show him the outside world. Some nights she sits, drifting listlessly in the _Falcon_ , unable to persuade herself to sleep, and feels a terrible frustrating boredom weighting down on her. It reminds her of the desert, the days spent stuck in her AT-AT during storms, compounding in on itself till it becomes something unbearable and wild.

The fields around the prison are overflowing with green. Late summer this side of Dantooine is readying itself for the harvest, while the prison is the same grey duracrete block Rey remembers from the one time she deigned to come out here, right before the trial.

The front desk is manned by a middle aged Kubaz who passes out forms to Rey and the three other sentients that had joined her on the bus from Malar. Name, planet or origin, relation to the prisoner.

Rey hesitates. In the end she writes acquaintance for lack of a better word to describe this bond.

The Kubaz looks through her form only to hand it back with a sniff. “We don’t have anyone named Kylo Ren here.”

“Right.” Rey crosses out the name and writes Ben Organa instead.

They’re led through to a room with off white walls and a low hanging ceiling, filled with tables and chairs not kept far enough apart from one another for private conversation. Somewhere deep within the facility, a buzzer sounds, followed by the swoop of blast doors firing open.

A handful of prisoners are led through and Rey is shocked to find that she recognises most of them. Plenty of former Resistance fighters joined the Neo Publica Peace Corps only to find that fighting a war is different from protecting civillians during peace time. They probably shouldn’t have joined up but Leia was never particularly gifted at translating her military skill set to normal life and when former soldiers ask her for career advice she inevitably points them at the nearest police force.

When he comes through, Rey only recognises him because his soul fits so neatly against her owl. Kylo Ren? Ben Organa? Has gained a few scars since they last met and there are crow’s feet growing from the corners of his eyes. They’ve shaved his head, the clean white of his scalp unfamiliar and shocking.

Rey hasn’t seen him since the trial. Not in the flesh. Back then she had sat back and waited with as much patience as she possessed to be called to give evidence. The prosecution argued that the Force bond made her an unreliable witness. She can’t remember if the judge ruled in their favour.

His eyes meet hers and he doesn’t smile, he never really smiled, but he lights up. The barrier Rey had erected in her mind is torn down and he overwhelms her, so that before she knows what she’s doing she’s rushing over to him and pulling him into an embrace that his handcuffs make it impossible to return.

“I’m sorry.” She breathes into the grey jumpsuit they’ve dressed him in. “I’m so sorry. I should have come.”

“It’s fine.” Kylo Ren? Ben?  Replies. His mind reels from the lonely nights, the aftermath of prison fights, the time he’s spent in solitary but it’s all drowned out by how desperately happy he is to see her. Like a starving man finally being offered food.

“No touching!” A guard screams and they reluctantly break apart.

When Rey drops down at one of the tables, she’s surprised to find herself smiling. Across from her, Kylo Ren? Ben Looks awkwardly large, curled around a set designed for someone smaller.

“I don’t…I…” Rey reaches up to wipe at her eyes. “I don’t know what to call you.”

He shrugs. “Ben. Kylo. Whatever you want.” His voice is deep, rich. Assertive and gentle all at once. Rey had no idea she’d missed him so desperately.

“But what do you want?”

His eyes turn towards the table, hands twitching in their shackled. “Ben. I think. I’m trying to be Ben.”

_But it’s hard._

Rey is set upon by memories that aren’t hers. Fights, blood. Bitten tongue and screeched expletives. Backed up against the wall in the gen pop courtyard and forced to make difficult decisions about whether or not to fight back.

He’s in gen pop now. He only spent four years in maximum security. Rey hasn’t spent nearly enough time on Dantooine.

It’s awkward, being handed his last ten years though it’s not her’s to understand. Rey shrugs her shoulders back and tries to straighten up. “Are you…how have you been?”

“In prison.” He replies, sarcastic but not unkind. Rey waits for him to turn steely and cruel. For all her attempts to shut him out, she carries a glimmer of him in her chest every day.

_I’ve been colder since I met you._

Ben looks up, sharp. Dravite eyes flecked with gold, seeping into a rich auburn that is deceptively soulful. Beneath the veneer of calm he has so carefully cultivated for her benefit, Rey can feel the anger the rage, the rock solid belief that he deserves to be here fighting the voice that tells him he doesn’t.

 _You’ve been stronger._ He replies. “I’ve found less value in my prejudices since I met you. Become more open minded, I suppose.”

“More naive.” Rey corrects. “I wouldn’t have wandered into so many firefights is I hadn’t been so…”

He watches her trail off and something of the solid mass inside him softens. “You wouldn’t have come back for me, on Snoke’s ship. I never thanked you for that.”

As far as Rey is aware, he’s never thanked anyone for anything. Not sincerely, that’s for sure.

Ben chokes up a tangled mess of grovelling apologies delivered at Snoke’s feet with the sole purpose of prolonging his life. He finishes off with a stab of vindication, hard enough to make Rey gasp. The manic excitement that flooded through him when he realised he could take the old man down, nothing like the steady dread that had built in her chest when she was in the throne room, right up till a man called Kylo Ren had turned and offered her his hand, offered her the Galaxy.

“Who would have thought I would fall so far?” Ben hisses. He’s shaking, physically. He hasn’t thought about Snoke in a long time.

“You didn’t fall,” Rey reminds him. “You changed re-evaluated your position.” Do you regret it?

_Sometimes. It’s hard not to regret giving up the ultimate seat of power in the Galaxy, even if you did it for the right reasons._

_You still think it was the right thing then?_ Rey asks, her heart in her mouth.

Ben nods ever so slightly, looks around the room in search of inmates Rey understands are sometimes friendly with him. _Yes. I can’t say that I enjoy the consequences, but there’s no fighting them._

Another rush of images crowd Rey’s brain, sudden frustration, a profound desire to turn back time. Sometimes he gets violent, often without meaning to but that doesn’t make the date he’s spent in solitary as a result any easier to deal with.

“I’m not going to tell you you didn’t deserve it.” Rey tells him.

“I know.”

“But I have wondered if things could have been different. I could have…not that I ever would have but...”

“Show me.” Ben shuffles forward, his manacled hands almost touching hers.

His eyes are deep, they long for something more than this but they don’t know how to argue their way into it. Rey closes her eyes so she doesn’t have to look and rewinds her life to Snoke’s throne room, Ben’s hand reflected in the flames as the stink of death circulated through the air. The low, pleading notes of his voice rising and falling through the carnage when he asked her to join him and this time Rey takes his hand. Terrible and dark. It would have been so easy.

“I still can’t believe you were strong enough to resist.” He says, quietly.

Rey opens her eyes and casts him a sad smile. “When you asked me to join you, that was a marriage proposal. Right?”

Ben flushes bright red with embarrassment. “I-“

“It’s fine.” Rey assures him. “It’s all fine.”

 

 

 

“You went to see him?” Rose looks up from her dinner in a rush. “Why?”

“It’s complicated.” Rey tells her. She doesn’t want to explain herself. Rose’s moral compass is so abominably strong that it would feel like failing all over again just to try.

Rose has gone tense her jaw clicking as she sets down her chow sticks. They’re in a fast food joint in downtown Dantooine Central. It’s public enough that she’s probably not going to fly off the handle about this.

“I just…I don’t…What is it with you and him, Rey?”

Rey looks determinedly into her food – some kind of local meat drenched in batter and served with roasted tubers. “What do you mean?”

“When I first met you, Finn was head over heels for you and I could tell you liked him but you didn’t think it was a big deal. And then during the trial you were so weird.” Rose clenches a fist on the table top. “I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you what that looks like. But you don’t seem like the kind of person who would let him walk all over you just because he’s got pretty eyes, so what’s up with that?”

“Who said anything about his eyes?”

Rose scoffs. “Please, Rey. I’m not blind. He’s kinda weird looking but if I could get past the whole assisting with genocide and trying to become overlord of the Galaxy thing, I might be able to admit that he’s cute.”

She probably wouldn’t say that if she’d seen him with his head shaves, Rey thinks. “He doesn’t walk all over me.”

“It’s just weird that you’ve seen what he’s like up close but you can’t hate him like the rest of us. Ok?”

Rey bites her bottom lip and tries not to let Rose’s scowl mean anything more to her than the perfectly justified rage of a friend. Everyone knows that her and Kylo Ren used to be bonded, but only Leia knows that they still share something through the Force.

“Listen.” Rey leans in so that none of the other patrons will be able to hear her. “I promise you, I’m not going to do anything stupid. But I had to see him. I had to know.”

“Know what?” Rose asks her dinner in clipped tones.

“Know if it was working. If he’s becoming a better person.”

“And?”

Rey shakes her head. “I don’t know. I’ve kept him out of my life for a long time, it’s hard to remember what he was like under all that rage. I think he wants to be better though.”

Rose looks at her with incredulity. “If he wants to be better, all he has to do is be better. Look at Finn.”

“We can’t all be as good as Finn.” Rey tells her as kindly as she can. “And I’m not about to tell Ben he’s wrong for trying. Force knows it would be a welcome change to see a Dark Sider come back to the Light for good.”

Rose wrinkles her nose, still unimpressed. “So what? You’re gonna hang around and hold his hand till he works out how not to kill people on sight?”

“No way.” Rey snorts. “He has to get better on his own. But if he needed a reminder of what made him want to turn in the first place, he got it.”

“What did you get?” Rose asks, her face softening just a fraction.

A sharp reminder of everything she’s been ignoring for the past ten years, Rey doesn’t say. She shrugs, takes another bite of her dinner. “I got to see what I fought a war for.”

Silence falls between them, at odds with the happy bustle of the mid-town diner. The hum of the burgeoning city like a swarm of fireflies building their hive makes the air crackle with the untapped potential of the night ahead. The Force is strong on Dantooine, it rises and falls in great waves that can be overwhelming if you let yourself tap into them for too long. Tonight will be filled with small victories, the possibility of excitement and wonder brought to life by the government workers and blue collar citizens alike as they enjoy they’re time off.

Rose finishes her food first and signals to their waiter for the bill. “You wanna have some fun tonight.”

Searching the Galaxy for up and coming Force sensitives doesn’t exactly leave much room in Rey’s schedule for fun. She frowns. “What kind of fun?”

“Like, a club.” Rose waggles her eyebrows, the beginnings of an impish grin twisting round her mouth.

The Jedi were supposed to be monks, living simple lives apart from wider society. But the Jedi had grossly abused their power and they fell. Rey has to be more than that.

She returns Rose’s sly smile and finishes up the rest of her food in two bites. “Ok.”

 

 

 

Five hours and Force knows how many cans of firewater later, they’re packed tight in one of the three clubs the Dantooine Central council have authorised to be open past moon rise. Rose has found herself a pretty Twi’lek girl to dance with and the two of them are laughing drunkenly as they try not to crash in to anyone else on the dance floor.

Rey giggles at the pair of them from across the room where she’s gotten picked up by a group of flight academy trainees who are much too young for her but don’t seem to mind. They believe that the night is best enjoyed dancing in a large circle where no one can tread on your toes and Rey is inclined to agree.

 _I needed this._ She breathes out through the Force, adding her voice to the rise and fall of Dantooine’s breath surrounding them.

She’s brought up short when the message lands.

When Rey turns round, she finds herself face to face with Ben, propping himself up on one arm in his cot and blinking sleep out of his eyes. The planet stops spinning around the two of them, the noise from the club becoming muted and far off.

They haven’t physically manifested for each other since the first night in his detention cell after the trial. Ten years ago. He had told her that he was going to try to sever the connection, that it would be better for both of them.

 _What are you doing here?_ Rey thinks.

 _I could ask you the same question._ Ben replies.

 _I wasn’t trying to contact you. Or wake you up._ Rey tells him. She’s distantly aware that beyond the apparition, Rose has noticed her falling into a trance and is flashing her concerned eyes.

 _I’m sure._ Ben’s thoughts are bitter. He squints, trying to make sense of her surroundings and a strange mixture of confusion and jealousy fills his heart.

Rey bites her tongue and lets him look. Maybe it’s cruel of her, he can’t have much experience with places like this. If the Jedi were strict about how much time their acolytes sunk into extracurricular activities, Snoke can’t have ever let Ben out to unwind.

He wasn’t asleep, she realises with a jolt. He’s been lying in bed, staring at the wall and focusing on the way the springs of his mattress dig into his side. He doesn’t know what to do with the information that Rey’s been getting on with her life. In his head, when she’s not working she’s powered down and silent, waiting to reanimate and walk back into his life.

 _I thought you would be looking for Force sensitives._ He says.

_I am, just not tonight._

The lights of the dance floor are reflected on his bald head. Rey wants to be angry with him, for thinking so little of her, but she also wants to pull him through a hole in the Force and let him taste a little of what it’s like to live without chains.

She doesn’t realise she’s thinking out loud till he cuts in. _I can’t._

His self-flagellation only makes her more determined to get him on his feet. You can and you will.

Ben doesn’t move, tangled in his insubstantial blanket and perched on his rickety cot. Everything in his room is too small for him.

As soon as Rey thinks it, she’s met by memories of the winter. Not exactly frigid this close to the equator, but close enough that Ben felt it. She knows all about that, from the nights she spent freezing in the Jakku desert.

“Rey.” Ben breathes.

Rey raises a hand to wave Rose down before she crosses the club to check on her. Rose takes the hint, and someone lays a hand on Rey’s back to pull her back into the circle of dancer.

 _Come on!_ She urges, holding out the same hand for Ben to take.

He resists. _I can’t._

_But Ben-_

_I’m in prison, Rey. It would defeat the purpose._

_No one has to know._

Rage bubbles up from his gut, familiar enough that Rey’s not exactly surprised but she’s not expecting Ben to push her back through the vale and into the arms of her friends for the evening. People whose names she won’t remember come morning. People whose faces will fade from her memory. People who Rey’s not going to forget completely because they made enough space for her to join their fun without needing to be asked.

People who are out for the night, having a good time. It doesn’t have to be all that deep.

“You alright?” An obnoxiously pretty human boy with dark skin and a cloud of hair framing his face smiles down at her. His arm’s around her waist where he stopped her falling on her ass.

The club returns to Rey in a rush, the thrumming of the music almost too loud to hear the bot over. Anger drifts back through the Force to Ben’s cell and Rey’s intoxication lets her put him out of her mind in an instant. “Fine, thanks.”

The night pours on. Rey dances, and she seethes, and she has the kind of fun she never thought possible growing up on Jakku.

 

 

 

Rey wakes in the middle of the afternoon with a pounding headache and a stiff neck. She groans, reaching for the covers and finding that they’d slipped to the floor during the night. She reaches for her lightsabre, tucked under her pillow, and is relieved to find the hard lines of the handle waiting for her. Sturdy, dependable, and always within reach.

When she stumbles out of bed to use the toilet and grab a glass of water, she finds the Twi’lek girl Rose had been dancing with the night before sat at the kitchen table. She smiles sheepishly at Rey, the brilliant blue of her lekku too bright for hungover eyes. “Sorry. I don’t mean to intrude.”

“S’fine. I don’t live here.” Rey reassures her. She shuffles to the sink and sticks her head under the tap until she feels slightly sick.

The day starts slow, both Rey and Rose’s guest – named Suu – taking turns in the refresher and making small talk over cups of caf. Suu was born on Dantooine, the daughter of former Rebellion engineers and she was instrumental in getting food aid to outlying planets when the First Order started flexing their muscles.

“I’m in the farming business.” She explains.

Farming. Rey can’t begin to imagine what that’s like. “Don’t you get bored, being planet bound like that?”

Suu laughs. “Most folk never leave the planet they’re born on. A whole bunch never even make it to the next continent. Getting to see the stars is a luxury, Rey.”

Just as Rey is starting to debate dragging Suu out to get some food, Rose pops her head out of her bedroom, grinning at both of them but wincing when they start to talk at what she believes is too loud a volume for this early in the morning.

“It’s almost sun down.” Rey laughs.

Rose puffs out her chest. “Then I think it’s safe to say I had a good night.”

“I know I did.” Suu winks at her. “Though I suspect I’ve overstayed my welcome. Your friend is fascinating.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Rose delivers a playful thump to Rey’s upper arm. “Rey, I’ve gotta message for you from Leia. She wants to see you.”

Rey’s stomach sinks. She was really hoping to do this through official channels, getting summoned already looks like a slap on the wrist. She reaches for the datapad Rose is holding, Leia’s message open on the screen. “When and where?”

“Like, right now. In her office at the capitol building.”

“Right now as in today?”

“Right now as in right now.” Rose clarifies. “You said it yourself, it’s nearly sundown. Leia can’t have much time left for meetings.”

After two years, Rey would have liked to make a good impression. Showing up late in the day, still hung over from the night before is not a good look.

“Good luck!” Suu calls as Rey makes for the door, a handful of painkillers shoved hastily down her throat and wearing one of Rose’s cleaner jumpsuits for lack of anything formal close to hand.

Rey will probably need it, though there’s a slim chance that this is going to be easy. The trouble with Leia Organa is that she can be intensely lovely or she can be ruthless and you never know which one you’re going to get.

The former General and Rose would probably get on like a house on fire.

 

 

 

“So, I hear you went to visit my son.”

Leia is dressed in a long white gown embroidered in gold and silver with a row of pale Dantooine pearls adorning the neck line. Her hair is done up in a hopelessly complex knot of braids and she hasn’t aged a day since Rey last saw her, two years ago on Coruscant.

She hasn’t aged a day since Rey first touched down on D’Qar. If Luke were here, he would probably say she never aged a day in her life.

“I just thought I…should.” Rey says, lamely. She feels out of place. The Neo Publica capitol is no longer the kind of place where you can get away with a mechanic’s jumpsuit under any circumstances and if Leia weren’t able to hide her in her office she’d probably have been thrown out by now.

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Rey.” Leia smiles. “I’ve been his only visitor pretty much for the past ten years. I’m sure the chance of scenery is good for him.”

Nice Leia. Rey’s getting nice Leia, at least for now.

“I should probably have gone to see him before now.” Rey fiddles with the cuffs of the jumpsuit. “Is that a weird thing to say?”

“Sure it’s weird, but it’s perfectly understandable.” Leia leans back in her chair, surveying Rey over stacks of legal documents. “I don’t know what I would have done if Vader had survived. Luke would have gone to see him in prison but if I had ever worked up the nerve it would have been a long way down the line.”

Rey slips into an approximation of a smile. “That’s not-“

“No, it’s not the same thing.” Leia agrees. “I do need to talk to you about this though, Rey. About you and Ben. The two of you can still link minds, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Would you mind walking me through exactly how that works?”

It seems somewhat redundant to explain the Force bond to Leia. They’ve had this conversation before, a couple of times, but apparently there are legal precedents and protocols that require they go through it from the beginning every time.

“It wasn’t intentional.” Rey explains. “It was the Force. I think it’s always been there, but neither of us noticed till I was on Ahch-To. I woke up one morning and I could see him sitting in the med bay on Hux’s destroyer. It was like I was in the room with him but also not.”

Leia nods. “And do the two of you have control over the bond?”

“Not at first. We’ve gotten much better though.”

“I need to ask because Ben is incarcerated and he is supposed to stay incarcerated. But if he’s able to step through the Force and visit your mind, he might be tempted not to properly serve his sentence.”

Rey shakes her head. “You don’t have to worry. He shut me out after the trial and we’ve barely made contact since.

“He shut you out?” Leia lets out a huff of surprise. “Didn’t think he had it in him. You’re gonna have to clarify what you mean by ‘barely’ though.”

“We sometimes catch snippets of each other’s thoughts or feelings, but never for long. It’s not perfect but if it doesn’t happen that often then isn’t it basically the same thing as visiting hours at the prison?”

“Yeah, I reckon we can argue that.” Leia agrees. “What about the thing where you feel like you’re in the room together? That happen often?”

Rey hesitates. Ultimately though, lying to Leia is almost impossible given her empathetic skills with the Force. “Once.”

“For how long?”

“Five minutes, tops.”

“When?”

“Last night.” Rey flushes scarlet.

They’re not connected in any special way and Rey’s never been much of an empath, but she feels Leia’s shock. A brief flash of something alien and outside of her drawn inwards. “Listen, Rey. Far be it for me to judge but at Ben’s level of security, conjugal visits are right out.”

“What?” Rey yelps, back going ramrod straight. “No, Leia. Force dammit, _no_! I was out, I was drunk. I asked him to dance and he said no.”

Relief rushes into the space left behind by Leia’s surprise. “Thank stars for that. But I’m still going to need you to be mindful of how you connect with Ben, and I’m going to have to ask him about it. Evidently it’s easier for you two to bridge the gap when you’re on the same planet. I’m guessing you’ve been drunk in other systems and haven’t wound up asking him to dance.”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen, but-“

“The Force is very mysterious, yes.” Leia smiles. “But it’s also an open door. If you don’t walk through it, it can’t touch you.”

Rey begrudgingly agrees. She’s oddly disappointed, she would hardly describe her life as lonely but with Chewie returned to Kashyyyk she finds that she had been hoping for a new travelling companion to liven up the _Falcon_ , if only a remote one.”

“Now.” Leia continues. “I need you to come and speak to the Atypical Educational Expansion committee about your search for Force sensitives. How long are you staying on Dantooine?”

“As long as you need me.” Rey leans over Leia’s diary and starts plotting how best to fit herself in to the endlessly busy schedule of Neo Publica.

 

 

 

“You shouldn’t have spoken to me like that.” Ben sniffs, settling into the chair opposite Rey.

Rey winces, she can feel Rose judging her.

Ben nods towards Rose. “And why is she here?”

“Because Rey is my friend but she can also be a monstrous idiot and sometimes she needs someone to keep an eye on her.” Rose replies, her eyes fixed to his shaved head.

Ben raises an eyebrow. “You need a babysitter now/”

“Not exactly.” It was Leia that suggested someone accompany Rey the next time she went to the penitentiary, to provide a less biased view on how she and Ben interact.

Ben is annoyed at having someone intrude on their time together. With only a little probing, Rey uncovers his resentment of Rose, the agitation he feels locked in his cell knowing that she’s on planet, how hard it had been to say no when she asked him too dance. Rey catches a sensation of how she looks in his eyes; brilliant and beautiful and-

_You think I’m beautiful._

_Please._ Ben replies. _That’s what you choose to focus on? You do your sex a disservice._

 _Rose thinks you have big sad eyes and are weird looking and that you are also kind of cute._ Rey informs him. Which is maybe not entirely true but it’s worth it to set him spluttering over what he’s supposed to do with that information.

Ben frowns at Rose in confusion and Rose perceives this as a challenge. “What are you looking it?”

“I don’t quite know.” Ben’s voice is stilted. “I believe you were the Resistance mechanic who caused Hux so much trouble with signal defractors.”

“Prior to Rey taking out the communications block altogether, yes.” Rose responds coldly.

“Thank you for that.”

Rose stares him down with scornful disbelief. Rey has to cut in fast to stop her retaliating with something awful.

“Ben, I came by to let you know that I’m going to be leaving Dantooine soon.”

He fidgets in his seat, a single desperate _no_ leaking out of his mind before he regains his composure.

Only it’s not composure. It’s a wall behind which lies an ocean oof boreom and rage that he doesn’t know what to do with but that he knows isn’t acceptable. He’s been struggling to reach the surface, gasping for breath his entire life.

“I see.” Ben says.

 _I’m sorry._ Rey tells him, brushing up against his mind. He’s tense, worried that he’s going to lose some of the small control he has on his emotions when she leaved. _We can still talk though._

_I’m supposed to be incarcerated._

_I spoke to Leia. She said we can talk sometimes, like visiting hours._ Rey assures him.

Ben unwinds fractionally. _I’d like that._

 _Me too._ Rey replies, sending him a small sample of the emptiness of open space. They haven’t spoken much since she arrived on Dantooine, but it makes a difference just being able to feel one another. 

Rose looks between the two of them. “Are you doing that thing where you talk in your heads?”

“Yes.” Ben replies.

“I wasn’t talking to you.” Rose snaps.

“Sorry.”

“Why are you- argh!” Rose growls in frustration and smacks her hand against the table. One of the guards steps forward and Rey has to wave him down. “What is your deal?”

Ben raises a questioning eyebrow. “My deal?”

“Yeah, your deal,” Rose bores in to him with hard, dark eyes. “I was at your trial, asshole. I gave testimony.”

“I remember.”

“Yeah? We do you remember the six guards you nearly killed when you had that temper tantrum before your sentencing?”

Rey is brought up short, she’s forgotten about that. Ben was being led from his holding cell to the courthouse having just told her that he was going to shut her out for good and he broke down, scattering his guards and using the Force to pummel them into submission. It hadn’t improved the outcome of his sentencing.

Ben nods and doesn’t say a word.

“So what I wanna know.” Rose continues, voice low and dangerous. “Is where you get off sitting there pretending like you’re some mild mannered victim of the system?”

The air shifts and Rey knows she doesn’t like where this is going. Ben’s mouth sets into a hard line, eyes shining bright and quick. “Would you rather I broke myself free of these chains? Killed a few of my fellow inmates? Maybe I could make the walls of my wing cave in, let a few choice criminals out to play.”

“Ben!” Rey snaps.

“I could bleed everyone in this room dry in five minutes if I wanted to.” He spits. “I don’t have a kaiber crystal handy but I could put together a lighsabre hilt in a matter of days. Then I just need to get out of here. Plenty of crystals on Dantooine, after all.”

Rose’s eyes are lit up like Rey hasn’t seen since they stood on the bridge of Leia’s ship and watched the _Finaliser_ crash into the atmosphere of Mustafar. “I’d like to see you stop pretending you don’t want to.” She stands and makes to leave. “I’ll see you outside, Rey.”

A guard barks out a five minute warning and Rey turns to Ben, furious. She probes his feelings and is more than a little disappointed to find him unremorseful. “What was that about?”

“I’m just trying to do my time so I can see if your brave new world is what it’s crapped up to be.” Ben snarls. “I don’t really understand your system of justice but she doesn’t have the right to come in here and assume I’m on the edge of giving up on them.”

Rey frowns. “What do you mean?”

“This doesn’t make any sense, Rey! Why put people in a box and expect them to come out any different than when they went in? If the First Order had gotten hold of you, you would have been put to work as a valuable asset or you would have been tortured and killed.”

“And you think that’s better?”

“I…don’t know.” Ben throws up his shacked hands. “I don’t get to find out if I don’t pay for my crimes or whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing here.”

“So you don’t think that having time to think on everything you’ve done is beneficial?” Rey squint at him, trying to work out if he believes his own spiel.

Ben’s mouth quirks in frustration. I feel like you’re deliberately misunderstanding what I’m trying to say.

Then say it clearer.

“I’m saying that if my crimes were unforgiveable I should have been killed on the spot and if they weren’t I don’t understand how thinking about them for years on end is supposed to change that.” Ben sends Rey memories of sharp awakenings, sat bolt upright in the dark, his thin prison issues night clothes drenched in sweat and the shadow of Snoke in the room. She can feel the graze on his knuckles where he hit the wall, throwing the Force into his fist and leaving a crack in the duracrete.

Rey knows what it feels like to be trapped at the the end of the universe from anyone who cares whether you live or die. “Time without temptation can help you change your ways. And people need time to forget. Some of them won’t ever change their minds about you but if you give them-“

_How long?_

_I don’t know_. Rey shakes her head. Ben’s sentence is ostensibly lifelong but Dantooine courts are notorious for letting people out on good behaviour. He may never set foot on another planet, but he might breathe free air.

If he can stick this out, not take his anger out on the other inmates. Maybe…

“Time’s up!” A voice barks over the comm system.

Rey stands and holds out a hand that doesn’t quit touch Ben so much as imply that she’d like to. “I’ll see you in the Force.”

He nods and sends her off with a half-hearted wave. Sorrow washes over him, flooding through their bond till Rey wishes he would shut her off. He’s thinking about the endless black of space, the _Falcon_ growing smaller by the second till it’s lost amongst the stars. The picture is awfully familiar to him.

 

 

 

Rose is sat in the corner of the waiting room glowering at the empty wall opposite her, leg twitching uncontrollably. Rey approaches carefully, sidling up next to her and waiting to be noticed.

“I swore I wasn’t going to let him get to me.” Rose growls at no one in particular.

“Yeah, well. Shit happens.”

“Who does he think he’s kidding? Sitting there all weird and repentant. He’s worse than he was at the trial.” Rose sits and stews in a mass of dark emotions that Rey doesn’t need to be a particularly gifted empath to get the gist of. Around them, people are drifting out to the transport, they’ll have to move soon if they don’t want to miss the bus back to Malar.

Her years of Jedi training combined with the months she spends on the move in open space have made Rey patient in ways that a childhood spent waiting never could. She holds back, waiting for Rose to catch herself up.

Rose continues her staring match with the wall for another five minutes before her shock sounds like a clap through the Force and she sits up very straight. “Oh no… Did I just lose the moral high ground to Kylo sodding Ren?”

“Eh. You lost an inch, he still has a mile or more to go.” Rey smiles. “And his name’s Ben, by the way.”

“Some friend you are.” Rose grumbles, taking the hand Rey offers to help her to her feet. “Hard to believe Leia of all people gave birth to that piece of work.”

“Leia’s Vader’s daughter, remember.”

Rose shudders as they head out the prison door towards the bus. “Man, I’m glad I’m not a Skywalker.”

“Same.” Rey agrees.

As they pull away from the penitentiary Rey reaches out to feel for Ben back in his cell. His morose mood is still hanging heavy over him, staring at the crack in the wall and wondering if he needs to repent for that too.

 

 

 ----------

 

 

Rey dreams of open skies overhead, the clear rich blue of Jakku summers marred by the ever present threat of sandstorms. You could wake in the morning to find that the wind changed the landscape overnight and you no longer know this place you are so sure if your home. She dreams of the hollow bellies of Star Destroyers, the flickering lights of Niima Outpost through the night. An empty TIE fighter cockpit boasts a wealth of parts she can trade for food but she still spends the best part of the day fiddling with the wiring, trying to get it to fly again.

When she wakes, her lightsabre is already in her hands and through the doorway of her cabin she can see shifting blue and orange light playing along the corridor. She reaches for her bedside chronometer and is disappointed to find that she’s barely slept five hours. Long haul off planet travel is the worst. Rey needs sunsets and at least eight hours of dark once a day to sleep properly. More than a week in deep space and she loses her ability to think straight.

She’s planning to be here for at least a week. It’s been almost two years since Rey was last on Kafrene and in that time she’s had no more contact with Valdak Tho than the occasional garbled audio communication. The young Ithorian is blessed with the kind of haggling skills that have Force sensitivity written all over them and she’d like to make time for some proper training with him while she’s here. Given that he’s the son of tech traders, she doubts she’ll be able to talk him out of cheating people out of a few extra credits, but better a morally flexible light side user than left to go rogue.

 _Was that a jab at me?_ Ben asks.

Rey hadn’t been aware that he was listening. _Not everything is about you._

Far from its parent sun, Kafrene doesn’t have the luxury of night and day, only a perpetual twilight brought out by the neon the traders that make their home here use to advertise their wares. The whole place is encased in an artificial atmosphere and heat is pumped through the streets from the old mine shafts. This place is never silent and no more than a third of the population are ever asleep at once. The people who live here long term lose all sense of daily cycles, operating entirely on the cues of hunger and fatigue. 

Rey has to wait for three hours for the space port shuttle service to wing by and head off into the Astral Nose, lower sixth quarter. Once she’s on the ground she moves fast, tracing steps she’s mostly sure she can remember to get to the Tho family stall.

She’s halfway to her destination when she catches a familiar signature in the Force and hears a voice she recognises cut over the hubbub, struggling to string a sentence together in Yavin infused Bocce. Rey whips round, rising on t her tiptoes to see over the crowd. She barrels towards the voice and winds up at an engine supplies store, next to a very grumpy customer.

“Poe!” Rey grins.

Poe glances at her without really seeing and holds up a hand for her to hold that thought. “Sorry, pal. I’m a bit- Wait, Rey? What are you doing here?”

He throws his arms around her in a back breaking hug. Rey chokes out a protest that she doesn’t really mean and gestures to the Bothan seller that they should probably just start serving someone else. “I’m here on Jedi business. What are you doing here? I thought you were still based on D’Qar?”

“Based on D’Qar doesn’t mean I’m glued to the place.” Poe winks at Rey. He’s a couple of inches shorter than her, and in the years since the fall of the First Order he’s picked up a crop of laugh lines, an ill-advised mustache and a mop of dark silver hair that he pulls off with more grace than he has any right to. He’s still wearing an old Resistance jacket, faded but sturdy.

“I’m trying to find a kid I’ve had my eye on for a while.” Rey explains. “Ithorian, works at an electronics stall specialising in wires. I’m pretty sure it’s close by.”

“Yeah, I reckon I passed a place like that a few blocks back. I’ll show you.” Poe claps a hand on Rey’s shoulder and starts leading her away through thee endless aisles of shops. “You’re pretty good with languages, right? Don’t suppose you’d mind asking around for a carbon ground box for me? Something for one of the new YT models.”

Rey raises an eyebrow. Poe doesn’t normally fly freighters, or anything built in the past twenty years. “Of course.”

 

 

 

Eight hours later, Rey has made passing contact with Valdak over a flood of customers and made him promise to take some time off the next cycle for training, Poe has a shiny new carbon ground box and they’ve met up with Finn at a canteena on the edge of the Residential district for this node.

Rey is grinning ear to ear, unable and unwilling to keep a lid on her excitement. Given that she doesn’t live on the same planet as them, she sees quite a lot of Finn and Poe but it’s a wonderful surprise to find them in the same stretch of space as her, completely by accident.

She digs Finn in the ribs. “Your hubby was awfully cagey about the details of your trip.”

Finn shoots Poe a bemused frown. “Couldn’t say why. We’re on a pretty standard clean up mission.

Finn and Poe are working out of a post war military base on D’Qar, still more connected to the remains of the Resistance than Neo Publica. When they’re together, they rarely waste time discussing work and Rey doesn’t really know what they do with themselves beyond break up skirmishes in their sector.

Leaning across the table with a conspiratorial air, Poe takes pity on her. “You know how First Order operatives who weren’t with the fleet were pretty much left to their own devices after the war? There’s still plenty of officers out there, most of them are kind of small fry but we still have to gather them up and make sure that they’re not potential threats. It’s more a formality than anything, we take ‘em back to D’Qar, ask them a few questions and then, if there’s nothing to be worried about, we send them back where they came from.”

A vein pops in Poe’s temple. Rey laughs into her beer. “Just a few questions for potential war criminals. That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Yeah, well. If it were up to me I’d shoot ‘em all in the head.” Poe shrugs.

“He’s started fistfights with twenty seven targets s far.” Finn clarifies.

“Hey! I waited till I was off duty to land a hit.”

 _Mister Dameron._ Ben cuts through Rey’s thoughts. She hasn’t been paying attention to what he’s doing but he must have been squirreled away at the back of her mind for most of the day. _I would have thought he’d have more faith in Resistance methods._

 _One time your mum was temporarily replaced by another officer and he started a mutiny in response._ Rey tells him. _Right in the middle of a fraught escape situation. He’s not exactly a diplomat._

_Ha! Which officer was it, anyone I’d know?_

_I think her name was Holdo._

_Amilyn Holdo?_ Ben’s mind rushes through memories of a very tall woman, talking to him in soft tones.

No, not tall. An adult, when he had been a child. One of Leia’s friends who used to dote on him before she had a war to fight. The woman in his memories is just on the cusp of middle aged, dressed in floating silk gowns in colours that clash with her bottle violet hair that fades to blonde at the tips. She doesn’t look like the person Finn and Poe have described to Rey.

 _She was the one who drove the Resistance front runner through The Supremacy._ Rey tells him, gently.

Ben momentarily drops out of her mind. When he returns, Rey can feel him smiling, shaking his head in grudging respect. _Of course she was._

“You alright?” Finn asks.

Rey looks down and realises that she’s paused with a chunk of protein block halfway to her mouth. She glances at Poe. Poe who makes no secret of his distaste with the decision to keep Kylo Ren alive when the war was done. Poe who grew up in the shadow of the war that ended the Empire. Poe who, despite the years he’s spent trying to be better, still shoots first and asks questions later. “I’m fine. Just dazed off.”

Not for the first time, Rey wishes that the Force had bonded her to Finn the way it had to Ben. She’s tried to open that channel herself a few times but to no avail. Some things are so much easier to think than they are to say out loud and she wants so desperately for him to know what’s in her head.

They keep eating, have a few more beers. Old war stories mingle amongst the details of their lives that they feed each other to fill in the gaps they leave when they’re forced to separate. It’s hard to believe it’s been fifteen years since the First Order fell.

“You’re both coming back to the _Falcon_ tonight.” Rey insists.

Finn and Poe have been complaining about their work commitments all evening, but they grin at each other, fingers tangling subconsciously on the counter top.

“I think we can make that work.” Finn smiles.

 

 

 

A few hours and Force knows how many beers later, Poe is the first of them to call it quits. Rey laughs at him as he fumbles with the access panel for the door to the _Falcon_ ’s guest cabin.

Finn watches carefully till Poe’s got the door closed behind him before rounding on Rey, his gaze remarkably steady for a guy who’s had as much to drink as she has. “So. What’s going on?”

“We’re here, on Kafrene! We’re together, we’ve had a few beers. It’s fun.” Rey leans in to pinch his cheek teasingly.

Finn takes her hand and pulls it into his, looking at her with an earnest concern. “Don’t give me that. You’ve been weird all night. You know how many times you’ve zoned out on us for a good five minutes?”

Rey shrugs and starts looking around for her drink. “I dunno. Once?”

“More like ten times.” Finn says, not unkindly. “I get that you’ve gotta scan for Force users or however your thing works but you have to learn to switch it off sometimes, Rey. It’s not healthy to stay in the zone like that all the time.”

When Rey locates her bottle, it’s almost empty. She desperately wants another one but a crushing sense of inevitability is creeping through her stomach. She and Finn need to have this conversation, it’s been entirely too long coming.

 _Are you going to tell him?_ Ben’s mind is clouded with apprehension that belongs entirely to him and a resigned acceptance that he’s channelling through Rey.

_I have to. He’s Finn, he deserves to know. He’ll be good about it. I promise. Poe…_

_Might fly off the handle?_

_It’s not a question of ‘might’._

Rey takes a steadying breath and grips Finn’s hand all the harder. “Do you know what a Force bond is?”

“Sure.” Finn’s expression flickers, unsure about what he sees as a sudden change in the conversation. “You and Ky- Ben Organa used to have one, right? Reading each other’s minds and projecting across space and all that.”

“Yes and no. It’s more like the other person is part of your consciousness. You can open or close the floodgates but they’re always sort of with you and when you really let them in…it’s like you’re the same person.”

Finn’s eyes bulge ever so slightly. “That certainly explains why you didn’t want him to get the death penalty.”

“Yeah- no. Listen, Finn. Force bonds are unbreakable, unless one person dies. And from what I can tell, the second person usually dies pretty soon after that.”

It takes a long time for this piece of information to settle, the silence of the main hold rendered incomplete by the whirring of electronics in the wall, the buzzing of the strip lighting over head in desperate need of replacing. Alcohol slows the process of perception, Finn’s disbelief breaking down in increments. “You mean…he’s still in there with you.”

Rey raps a knuckle on the side of her head. “Yhup.”

 _Ow._ Ben’s thoughts are thick with sarcasm.

“Oh. Wow. Um…so like…he can hear everything I’m saying? Can he see me?”

“He can’t see you.” Rey tries a weak smile. “He’s listening though. I can shut him out if you want.”

Finn is still looking straight at her, squinting like he might be able to see the dark outline of the man who once struck him down in the middle of the forest and left him for dead. Finn’s going to have that scar as long as he lives. Rey feels the sharp sting of something that isn’t quite guilt and isn’t quite embarrassment pushing out from Ben.

“So what, he’s in there for emotional support?” Finn asks.

Rey suddenly feels very stupid for doubting him. Of course Finn was never going to judge her for this, she doesn’t need Ben holding her hand from far off Dantooine. Ben is not her first friend.

“I’m sorry, I should have-“ She starts and Finn cuts her off with a good natured chuckle.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, Rey. It’s not like you planned this, right? It just happened.”

“Right.” Rey’s smile feels more forceful now.

Finn’s hands are still on hers, steady and sure. “You don’t have to shut him out. I’m gonna have to get used to him I guess.”

“What?”

“From what we hear from Leia, he’s behaving himself.” Finn shrugs. "He’s probably not going to be in prison forever. And if you were going to cut him lose you would have done it by now.”

“You know, if the roles were reversed I wouldn’t have been nearly so good about this.” Rey tells him. 

“Can you imagine?” Finn snorts. “Speaking of which we probably shouldn’t tell Poe just yet.”

“No.” Rey agrees. “I tell you what we can tell him though, Rose has been visiting Ben in prison.”

Finn stops breathing for a moment, eyes going wide in horror as he stares into the middle distance. “Rose went to see Kylo Ren in prison?”

“Ben Organa!” Rey corrects him. “And not just once. They’re almost friends.”

 _That’s a rather generous view of the situation._ Ben remarks.

_Oh please, you love having her around. She challenges you. You love being challenged._

“Wow.” Finn falls back in his set. “Well Rose has not been mentioning that when she hits us up on the holonet.”

“I think she’s maybe a little upset that she actually enjoys his company.”

_She enjoys my company?_

_I mean, she didn’t say as much but you have both got to stop pretending you don’t get on._

“It’s a crazy old universe.” Finn looks dazed.

Rey is thoroughly delighted that he’s having a harder time processing Rose’s budding friendship with Ben than her own bond with him. “It sure is.” She smiles, and reaches for the cooler to grab them each another beer.

 

 

 

All Rey knows for sure is that she wakes up eight hours after she went to bed. Whether she’s in a new cycle or a different day from when she went to sleep, she couldn’t say. Finn and Poe stay on the shuttle into the merchants’ hub after she gets off, walking through the towering heights of Kafrene with the taste of someone else’s anxiety on the back if her tongue. She tries to drown it out with a local brand of ultra-sweet caf but it won’t budge.

When Ben gets like this, there’s little Rey can do but wait for the mood to pass. She tries talking him out of it as she moves towards the Tho’s shop but he only drifts deeper into the dark trenches of his mind.

She should really ignore him, but he’ll hang over her till he’s sorted himself all the same. Rey grans in frustration and ducks into the space between two stalls to give them both some privacy. _What’s wrong?_

 _Prison riot._ Ben’s wound tight, ready to lash out at anyone who comes near him. Rey can feel the Force boiling under his hands. _Not in this block but they’re moving this way._

 _Oh._ Rey collects herself. This is hardly the first riot Ben’s sat through but they don’t normally make him so nervous.

He offers up a garbled, barely comprehensible reason for his worries. Something about how they’re rioting just to get to him. He’s sure.

_I’m sure._

_Why?_

_They’re just…they’re so…_ His heart is racing and the ozone stink of lightning hits Rey like a fist to the gut. _They’re so angry._

Ben’s got the natural empathy of his mother but he’s never fine-tuned it. He feels the precise colour of emotion but he doesn’t pick up on intent.

“Hold still.” Rey breathes.

_I’m probably going to attack them and have ten years added to my sentence._

“I said hold still!”

Rey reaches back into her spirit memory, remembering how to open a door in the Force. She’s done this twice in the past and both of those were huge rips that physically hurt to make, profound enough that every Force sensitive in the sector felt it. Today she’s trying for something more delicate. Starting slow, she leans in to the force and pushes ever so gentle, pulling apart layers of time and distance until she reaches the veil.

Rey reaches out, with her hand. Exactly how Luke told her not to, and slips past the gossamer layer of nothing between herself and Ben. It’s not a whole body projection, she can’t even see him. But she can feel him and hear his heart pounding in her ears and that’s what she needs right now.

Ben’s hands are balled into fists, resting on his knees. He’s hunched over in his cot, rocking backwards and forwards ever so slightly and muttering something under his breath. Rey feels him jump when she pulls apart the fingers of his right hand to thread them through her own. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to stay with you.”

Rey has no idea how long she waits, but she doesn’t pull her hand back till Ben’s pulse has returned to normal. The riot never comes anywhere near him.

They didn’t come for me.

No. Rey replies. They may not have been angry at you at all.

 

 

 

When she arrives at the Tho’s home, Rey is in a very strange headspace. Ben is stuck to her like a second shadow, the veil drawn closed but still nervous enough not to let her go.

As such, she’s not prepared for the request Valdak’s first father, Dol, makes of her when he opens the door. “We want you to take him with you.”

Rey isn’t really listening. “Right.”

_He wants you to what?_

“So you’ll take him?”

“I…um…” Rey blinks. “Sorry, I just got here. I should really-“

_They want you to take their son with you._

_They want me to what?_ Rey frees.

_You might want to ask about that before you leap into training._

The effort Ben puts into presenting a calm façade would be funny if she couldn’t feel how distressed he still is.

“I’m sorry, I don’t take full time apprentices.” Rey splutters out. She can’t understand, doesn't want to understand, why anyone would give away their offspring like that. “Valdak should be at home, with you. He deserves his parents.

 _But we turned out just fine._ Ben’s sarcasm is unappreciated.

“He doesn’t have to be your full time apprentice. He can be your mechanic or your scout. You could train him as a pilot. Dol hoots. Ithorian is a hauntingly beautiful language.

The Tho home is little more than a ramshackle hut pieced together from the hulls of ships so old Rey doesn’t know the name for them. She waits for this to hit her in the chest, for the memories of being small and lonely in the desert to rise up till she has no choice to kick Dol back and make him swear on everything he loves to take care of his son.

Nothing changes. All the same. “I can’t.”

“What life will he have here?” Dol pleads. “He’ll grow up to be another junk trader, he’ll never leave. You come here telling us that he could be a Jedi but you refuse to train him properly! I’ve heard the old stories, Jedi needed years of training. How is he supposed to learn if you come by here every few years?”

Rey looks towards the street, where the shack opens onto the thoroughfare. Valdak is in position, haggling with potential buyers and being so unbearably subtle and precise with how he targets them with the Force. He’s already very good at this, he’d be an easy first pupil to train.

_You know, you could use an apprentice…_

She huffs and pushes past Dol into the house. “I’ll think about it.” She tells him.

“Valdak!” Valdak’s mother calls, getting up from the dining room table with a friendly wave in Rey’s direction. “Your teacher’s here.”

“Rey!” Valdak squeals, his voicebox almost wrapping itself around her name properly as he comes bounding through into the living room.

“That’s Master Rey to you.” Rey reminds him.

“Yes, yes. Master Rey.” Valdak hops quickly from one foot to the other. “What are we going to learn today?”

 

 

 

At the end of the week, Rey meets

Rey looks towards the front of the shack, where it opens up onto the street. Maldak is in position, haggling with potential buyers and being so unbearably subtle and precise with how he targets them with the Force. He’s already so good at this, he’d be a very easy first pupil to train.

_You know, you could use an apprentice…_

She huffs and pushes past Dol into the house. “I’ll think about it.” She tells him.

“Maldak!” Maldak’s mother calls, getting up from the dining room table with a friendly wave in Rey’s direction. “Your teacher’s here.”

“Rey!” Maldak squeals, his voicebox almost wrapping itself around her name properly as he comes bounding through into the living room.

“That’s Master Rey to you.” Rey reminds him.

“Yes, yes. Master Rey.” Maldak hops quickly from one foot to the other. “What are we going to learn today?”

 

 

 

At the end of the week, Rey meets Valdak and Dol at a caf joint half way between the space port and their shop. She goes in her scruffiest clothes and doesn’t bother doing her hair up properly, trying to appear as unglamorous as possible in the hope that they will think long hard think about this before they commit to anything.

Valdak is full of energy, he never stops moving. She keeps trying to work out how she’s supposed to deal with a hyper active twelve year old in confined conditions, then remembering that he’s lived most of his life in an impossibly cramped shack on a trading outpost with little enough room to breathe let alone tire himself out.

 _Maybe he just needs some space._ Ben suggests, for the umpteenth time. He’s very keen on Rey taking Valdak on, surprising even himself with how much he vicariously enjoys the boy’s company.

 _Maybe._ Rey takes a long sip of her caf, unadorned and blisteringly bitter. She can’t wait to get back into the orbit of a proper sun.

Ben nudges her ever so slightly. He’s taking a stroll through the yard in the hour of exercise time he’s granted each day and though she can’t see him she can feel the warm Dantooine sun on his face, smell the living green rising off the grasslands. Her heart aches to be back there, to see Rose and Leia. To see him.

A strange convulsion in the Force echoes the sentiment back to her and Rey blushes furiously into her mug. Ridiculous. She’s supposed to be some sort of Jedi master, and she’s hardly young anymore. She should have a better handle of herself than this.

_You’re so bright when you’re around him. You spend so much time in deep space, Rey. You’re so lonely._

“Don’t tell me how to feel.” Rey mutters, like he doesn’t know just as well as her. _You’re lonely too._

_I am. But I have a lot less choice in the matter._

“Master Rey!”

Rey looks round to see Valdak barging through the crowds to get to her. He’s barely waist height on most of these life forms but he sends out a brief suggestion through the Force that they might like to get out of his way and more or less clears himself a path.

It’s not exactly an ethical use of the Force, but Rey is too busy being impressed that he thought up the technique to reprimand him. Valdak makes it to her stool and throws his arms around her in a hug that feels far too big coming from a someone so small.

He’s excited, he can feel the rest of his life stretching out in front of him, and just for a moment Rey can see the shape of his future. Solid and clear. The years she’s going to spend training him, the lightsabre he’s going to build for himself, how much happier this path is. She draws in a tight breath and without thinking brings her arms up to return the hug.

Valdak pulls away, smiling up at her through his offset Ithorian eyes. Rey hasn’t heard of any Ithorian Jedi in the past, but she supposes there must have been some. “I’m ready!”

“His stuff's all packed.” Dol says, following up the rear. “That is, if you’re still willing to take him.”

“I…” Rey pauses.

Ben nudges her again. _Come on!_

“Yes.” Rey smiles at Dol, then at Valdak. “Yeah. Valdak’s gonna be my new Padawan. My first Padawan.”

Valdak hoots in triumph and starts doing something of a victory dance that almost knocks a waitress clean over. He has a lot to learn about spatial awareness.

Dol swings a fully packed bag off his shoulders and passes it to his son. “You better make the best of this, kid.”

“I will, I will!” Valdak shrieks.

Dol turns to Rey. “Thank you.”

“No need.” Rey assures him. “I’ve needed to take on a Padawan for a while. I just needed someone to force me to take that leap. I should be thanking you. I have a few conditions, though.”

Dol straightens up somewhat and crosses his arms, reflexive in a businessman who makes most of his sales off the back of haggling. “I assumed you would. Hit me.”

“I will never take Valdak with me into dark space, he will always be able to get in contact with you. If you guys move shops or get off Kafrene, you tell us immediately. If I ever bring Valdak back here to find that you’re not waiting for him it will not end well for you. And Valdak has to spend at least one month of every year with his family. You’re going to stay a part of his life.”

Rey hasn’t met enough Ithorians to know what their faces do instead of raised eyebrows, but she thinks the hitch in Dol’s voice serves as a worthy substitute. “Is that all? We haven’t even negotiated payment.”

Dol’s hand goes to his pocket and Rey slaps it away. “If you try to pay me for taking on your son I will take you outside and skin you.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. Very sure. It’s an honour that you’d trust me with him in the first place.”

A blaze of warmth rips across the starts from Dantooine and into Rey’s chest. Ben flood through her, his smile so bright she could swear that it’s picked out amongst the stars. _Thank you._

She stands back and lets Dol and Valdak say goodbye to each other, with big hugs and a lot of hooting that doesn’t make much sense to her. A Kafrene dialect of Ithorian that she has no hope of understanding. When they’re done, Dol gives his son a final pat on the ledge between his head and shoulders before leaving. Waving to them both out of the window.

Rey finishes her caf and smiles down at Valdak. “You ready?”

_Yes._

“Yes!” Valdak practically sparkles up at her. Rey leads him out of the diner and back the way she came. Back to the spaceport and the Falcon, excitement itching her palms at the prospect of showing a whole new sentient what it means to have the Galaxy at your fingertips.

 

 

\----------

 

 

Rey dreams of flight simulations on a worn out computer that lasted as long as it did only by the grace of her repair work. She dreams of the interior engines of Star Destroyers and of the time she spent pouring over the controls working out which pieces were used to make them fly. The endless emptiness of space is never really dark because it is pumped full of stars scattering light into the cosmos and it’s all hers for the taking so long as she stays the course in her bundle of bolts and scrap metal. Rey dreams of a round spacecraft taking off into the eerie blue Jakku skies and she no longer resents it. She has had so much time to grow beyond what her parents assumed she would become.

She wakes and finds her lightsabre in the alcove over her head. The soft clinks of metal on metal as Valdak working on his lightsabre hilt in the main hold. He’s got a knack for turning junk into gold and he’s a very diligent worker once he sets his mind to a task. Rey is thrilled by the progress he’s making.

 _He’s just like you._ Ben remarks.

 _He’s far less hotheaded than I was at his age._ Rey corrects. Aged fourteen, she was just starting to get big enough to fight off other scavengers for prize loot and she was making the best of it.

She gets dressed and goes through to the living area, where Valdak has already set the machine in motion for her morning caf. “Good morning Master Rey, Master Organa.”

“Good morning, Padawan.” Rey replies. Valdak likes using Jedi titles as much as possible. His spare time is mostly spent flicking through the Jedi histories Rey has managed to scrape together and he wants nothing more than to become a legend like the knights of old.

 _Tell him I say good morning._ Ben urges her.

Rey rolls her eyes. “Master Organa says good morning too.”

Valdak nods without looking up from what he’s doing. The hilt he’s working on looks more or less complete but he assures Rey that there’s plenty still to be done with it. It turns out that in addition to being something of a genius when it comes to mind tricks, he has extraordinary talent when it comes to using the Force to analyse mechanical and electrical objects.

Lifting rocks and mind reading, he’s less good at. But no Jedi gets a full bag.

 _Except Anakin Skywalker._ Ben corrects. If Rey had spoken out loud, Valdak would have said the same thing.

There’s something different about Ben today. He’s been getting steadily brighter for months, his bursts of anger and anxiety becoming less and less common. Looking at the penal records as best as she can access them from the _Falcon_ , it would appear that about a year ago, Chancellor Leia Organa saw to it that every prison in Neo Publica invest in an on staff therapist and the policy is doing wonders for him.

This though, this is different.

 _What’s up?_ Rey asks.

Ben pauses, doing his best to scramble the signal he’s sending out to her as he decides how much he wants to say. They can’t shut each other out anymore, not like they used to be able to. After a particularly nasty flurry of bad nights she had tried to push him away in an attempt to get some sleep and had failed spectacularly. The few tries they’ve had since then in an honest attempt to test the strength of the bond have failed.

 _Something good has happened._ Is all he says. _Rey, when are you next coming to Dantooine?_

 _Not sure._ She fire off quickly before turning to Valdak. “Hey, you know how we’re heading past Coruscant before we get to Boole?”

“Yhup.”

“How’d you like to stop by Dantooine after.”

Valdak sits up very straight, his eyes bulging in what Rey now understands is the universal Ithorian expression of overexcitement. “You mean…get me a crystal?”

“And see the Neo Publica headquarters, and meet Chairman Organa.”

“And meet Master Organa?” Valdak asks, hopefully.

Rey nods. “I don’t see why not?”

 _So?_ Ben asks, waiting for a time.

They have places to be, things to do. Rey is expected to log records of new Force sensitives on Coruscant and check out leads on a potential mining scam for Leia on Boole. _Three months?_

The shudder of disappointment that runs through Ben doesn’t last long. _Three months. Ok. I can make that work._

 _I wish we could get there sooner._ Rey sends him a flush of warmth. Missing Ben is a strange sensation, because they’re never really separated from one another and yet it’s been almost ten years since she stopped on Dantooine long enough to see him. When Rose had stormed out, and he hadn’t wanted her to go. She’s almost forty, he must be pushing fifty. She wonders if he’s still bald.

Ben wonders if she still wears her hair in buns (she doesn’t, though she's been trying some simple Alderaanian styles) and he wonders if her brow still dimples when she concentrates very hard (it does, but it has a few wrinkles to join it now) and he wonders if she’s still beautiful.

 _Ben…_ Rey sighs. She’s so much better than him at not considering that aspect of the Force bond, though there have been nights when they’ve fallen into each other’s arms in dreams.

 _It just seems so foolish to pretend that I’m not thinking it._ He replies.

Rey leaves Valdak working on his lightsabre hilt and heads to the cockpit to start replotting coordinates to get them to Dantooine once they’re done on Boole.

 

 

 

Three months pass in a blur and before Rey knows where the time went, she’s walking into Dantooine space port and being met by Rose with no fewer than four people standing at her back. “I’m dating all of them.” She explains to Rey, puffing out her chest in satisfaction. “Hey! Is this the new Jedi kid?”

Rose is as happy as Rey’s ever seen her, even if her relationship gives Rey a headache every time she tries to work out exactly who feels what about whom. She’s heading up a major mechanical division on planet and there’s talk of her being transferred to Corellia to move on to working on the big transport ships that are in production to try to make space travel easier for those without their own transport.

“I don’t know, ya know? I love my job but I love Dantooine. And I always said I was gonna move back to Hays Minor when all this was done.” She sighs, showing Rey and Valdak through to the guest room in a much bigger house than she had the last time Rey stopped by.

“You should totally go for it!” One of Rose’s boyfriends urges, propped up against the doorframe.

Rose blushes. “I’ll work it out.”

“She’s the one who used to work with Finn, right?” Valdak asks for clarification once Rose has left them to settle.

“Right.” Rey says. It’s so strange that he doesn’t know this. Born in the wake of the war and only knowing that which was passed to him. Kafrene, without any formal governance, had been neutral during the war and what he knows that Rey didn’t teach him is surprisingly balanced.

Midway through their first day, Rose’s datapad lights up with the anticipated invitation to an audience with Leia.

“She says she wants to meet with you informally. There’s an address at the bottom here.”

“Cool, when?”

“As soon as possible.”

The address is out of town, a transport’s ride away. Rey debates leaving Valdak with Rose, he’s probably had enough of travelling for the day after all, but she can’t imagine Leia would be pleased to find out that she thought the latest addition to the Jedi line wasn’t worth an audience with the Chair of Neo Publica.

Rey’s still not quite sure what a Chair does or how it’s different from the Chief Councillor or the President, but she knows it’s important. The picture’s of Leia that she’s seen in the news over the past decade have shown a woman who barely seems to age and always has something worth fighting for up her sleeve.

“I bet it’s the Force!” Valdak burbles excitedly. “Leia Organa has the Force, right? Loads of Jedi used to live for way longer than they were supposed to and no one ever figured out why but it makes sense for it to have something to do with the Force.”

“You’re probably right.” Rey agrees with him, then has to stop to wonder what that means for her. She feels like she’s in her middle ages but for all she knows she’s still young by the measure of her lifespan. She may look back one day to find that she saved the Galaxy when she was little more than an infant.

Yhe transport they take is the same one that she had to take ten years ago when she came out to see Ben at the penitentiary. Rey doesn’t know quite what that means but she knows that it can’t be a coincidence.

They walk away from the centre of Malar, so much smaller than Dantooine Central. It takes them less than an hour to reach the suburbs, a messy contingent of small holdings strung together by a road more or less impassable to anything but speeders.

They’re headed to one of the cabins that backs onto farmland, a place simply labelled as ‘number five’. It turns out to be one of the smaller buildings, with no machinery outside it. The domed roof is unpolished and the gate leading up the front garden is barely on its hinges.

Valdak dips his eyes into his best impression of a human frown. “This smells like deceit.”

Rey nods. “Yeah, but it doesn’t feel malicious. Stay close though, just in case.”

In case of what? If anyone’s tried to hurt Leia Organa they will be in for a world of trouble from the woman herself. Rey approaches the front door cautiously and knocks just the once before falling back to what she hopes is out of arm’s reach for whatever life form opens up to let them in.

For a long moment, nothing happens. Rey and Valdak hold their breaths together, listening for the sounds of feet moving inside the house, reaching towards the door.

There are definitely feet moving inside the house, and muffled voices, one of which sounds like it could be Leia. The other one…

“Stars above.” Rey whispers as the door swings open and a familiar face comes into view.

Ben’s hair has started to grow back in, a thin dusting ghosting the top of his head. It’s still admirably dark, though there are handfuls of grey in the mix that she really should have been anticipating. His right cheek is still twisted by the scar she gave him twenty five years ago but it’s faded from the angry red she remembers to a clean white line. He looks impossibly enormous, standing in the front doorway of this little house, dressed in the tan tunic of a farmer.

“I don’t think that’s Chair Organa.” Valdak surmises.

Rey draws a shuddering breath and tries to squash down the urge to cry but soon realises that it’s not coming from her and there’s nothing she can do to change the way Ben feels.

“Ben?” She asks, just to be sure.

He smiles ever so slightly, shrugs. “Who else?”

“Oh!” Valdak darts forward, having established who it is he’s talking to. “You must be Master Organa. I’m Valdak.”

“Nice to meet you, Maldak.” Ben starts. He remembers himself a moment later and offers a hand that the boy shakes with great enthusiasm.

From within the house, a voice unmistakably Leia’s shouts. “Are they here? I wanna meet this new Jedi boy.”

“Run ahead and meet the General. I mean the Chair. Go meet Leia.” Rey urges him. She’s still rooted to the spot as she watched Valdak slip past Ben and into the house.

Her breathing is still behaving very strangely. Rey doesn’t bother trying to spit out strangled words. _When did you get out?_

 _About three months ago_. He’s still smiling, not quite fully but he means it. _Sorry, I wanted it to be a surprise._

 _Consider me surprised_. Rey laughs and the first tears that he can’t quite hold back prickle at her eyes.

 _I’m out on parole. I can’t leave the planet. They have me on physical labour only until they’re sure I can be trusted with anything else._ Ben starts to explain.

Rey doesn’t quite have the words to explain how little she cares about the conditions and manner of his freedom. She can only be happy that he’s here, that he’s standing in the doorway of a home that is his own, that the dark parts of his soul that still weigh him down on bad days are hers to share and hold up.

In the aftermath, neither of them can even remember moving. But one moment they’re standing several feet apart and the next they’re thrown together like atoms colliding in the heart of a star to make new elements. They hold each other up as their mouths find each other, fast and desperate, like this might be all the time they have.

 _We have so much time._ Rey assures him.

 _I know. I know. I don’t care._ Ben replies.

They’ve never physically kissed before, but it feels like something they’ve been doing for years, leaning into each other and tasting thoughts on the others breath. Rey doesn’t want it to end, much as she knows that they’ll have however many thousands of days to do this over and over again.

There are birds singing over the fields. The late afternoon sun is warm on the back of her head. Rey pulls back and brings her hand up to cradle Ben’s face, smiling up at him through a blur of tears and seeing him smiling down at her.

“Are you two done out there?” Leia calls.

“No!” Rey replies before Ben can get a word in edgeways. She reaches out with the Force till it swallows and surrounds them, and for one blessed minutes it’s as if nothing else exists in the whole Galaxy.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy valentines! :D


End file.
